REVIEW: Getting Even by Kayla Perrin

You have a nice voice. It's very readable but the characters and plot of this story failed to do your voice justice. I am sure that you are writing within the guidelines that were put forth by HQN for its Spice line. I don't really understand what those guidelines are, as evidenced by your story, but I presume that they have to do something with having explicit definitions of sex. I usually define erotica as a novel that uses sex to advance the story, generally it is to advance a character development or character growth of one or more characters through sex which is what I found Sasha White's book Bound to be wherein the heroine learns that she needn’t change her life geographically to change herself.

Your book featured explicit sex but no growth through that sex. Your explicit sex was merely explicit sex. While the scenes had something to do with the story of the moment, the sex didn't have any thing to do with the over all plot. You could read those same scenes without the explicit sex and it would not be any different of a story. On that basis, this book as an erotica novel fails.

It is also not a romance in any way shape or form. It is the story of three women who make bad decisions in their love lives and end up paying for it. They devise a scheme to gain revenge upon the men who have done them wrong. This is not a bad theme for a book it's just that your characters, all three women, were so dumb, clueless, ostrich-in-the-sand, passive aggressive, I couldn't stand to cheer for any of them. For example, one protagonist has not had sex with her husband in 14 months and she refuses to believe that he could be cheating on her. Another protagonist is so wrapped up with her wedding plans that I didn’t begrudge the groom from wanting something different. The third protagonist fell for a smooth talking guy who had broke her heart before. She never learned the “fool me once” theorem, or if she did hear of it, she didn’t want to put it into practice.

From the title, I expected this to be a revenge story but instead 3/4 of the book is spent watching these supposedly smart women be taken advantage of emotionally, sexually, and financially by some rat bastards. This is really not my idea of a good book, regardless of the genre. C- for you.

Best regards,

Jane

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty.
You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

Copyright

FTC Disclaimer

We do not purchase all the books we review here. Some we receive from the authors, some we receive from the publisher, and some we receive through a third party service like Net Galley. Some books we purchase ourselves. Login